Biography

6 April 1937, Bakersfield, California, USA. Like a razors edge, Merle Haggard sings is how John Stewart described his voice in Eighteen Wheels, and that razor has been honed by his rough and rowdy ways. In the 30s Haggards parents migrated from the Dustbowl to the land of milk and honey, California. Life, however, was almost as bleak there and Haggard himself was born in a converted boxcar. His father, who worked on the Santa Fe railway, died of a stroke when Haggard was nine. Many of Haggards songs are about those early years: Mamas Hungry Eyes, California Cottonfields, Theyre Tearin The Labour Camps Down and The Way It Was In 51. Haggard became a tearaway who, despite the efforts of his Christian mother (Mama Tried), spent many years in reform schools. When only 17, he married a waitress and they had four children during their...